An Interview with Jur Advisor Ariel Mielich founder of Decentraland

Former startup founder & Charles River Ventures analyst Ariel Meilich is a project lead at Decentraland & a member of the Voltaire House, a crypto community in Buenos Aires. He contributes to ICO strategy & community building experience.

“I was interested in JUR for its potential to help Genesis Content, Decentraland’s ecosystem fund; instead of investing on each project in lump sums, whenever the fund invests, it sets a series of deliverables which, when met, trigger a payout. There will occasionally be disagreements about whether these milestones were effectively met. JUR could become the dispute resolution system to solve these type of issues.”

When did you first begin to work with decentralized systems?

Back in 2013 I participated in a Buenos Aires political party that set out to decentralize legislative decision making, proposing to have representatives that would vote in favor or against laws based exclusively on the decisions of constituents of the party, who voted in an online, liquid democracy platform. That environment introduced me to Bitcoin, and a couple of years later I met the Voltaire House crowd, who were all blockchain engineers.

What attracted you to decentralization? What are the main advantages of decentralized vs centralized systems?

The ability to transact directly between parties with no intermediaries has some obvious advantages, particularly for people in emergent economies whose government oftentimes restrict free trade. For example, a few years back I used to pay some contractors in Bitcoin, because the Argentine government had established a rule whereby all USD inflows had to be converted at an official rate, forcing people to get half the value for their dollars when denominated in Argentine pesos.

Can you tell us a little about your role in Jur and how you expect to contribute?

Having navigated the vicissitudes of running a token sale, I am able to advise the JUR team on community building, marketing, and best practices.

What sort of businesses do you expect will be the first to use Jur?

I was interested in JUR for its potential to help Genesis Content, our ecosystem fund; instead of investing on each project in lump sums, whenever the fund invests, it sets a series of deliverables which, when met, trigger a payout. There will be disagreements about whether these milestones were effectively met, and JUR could become the dispute resolution system to solve these.

What impact do you think Jur will have on global commerce and why?

JUR has the potential to lower costs in global commerce by reducing the huge amount of legal and administrative overhead. Lawyers and bureaucracy are really expensive!

Looking at your resume, you’ve been pretty busy. Do you have any spare time? What do you do for fun?

I play soccer and train several times a week, and I couldn’t work as much if I didn’t take time off every week to read, play, and socialize.

What are some of the biggest innovations & impacts we can expect to see from decentralized technology in the next 5 years?

A new programmatic, financial infrastructure is in the works. Transacting without trusted parties is a huge deal, and once the UX of blockchain applications reaches parity with centralized ones, we will begin to see massive change.

Were you into computers as a hacker or gamer when you were a kid?

I was an avid gamer as a kid, having spent countless nights playing MMOs instead of sleeping.

What are the largest barriers for widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies and token based utilities?

Users have no patience for a bad UX and the current economics of dApps. High fees, slow transaction confirmation times are huge barriers to entry. Also, new users do not want to deal with private key self-management, and due to lack of regulation there are yet no custodian solutions for dApp developers, and doing this in-house is both a loss of focus as well as well as a security risk.

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Jur is the justice as a service on the blockchain built to recreate trust in business relationships, allowing people to safely make agreements digitally enforced thanks to a peer to peer dispute resolution system.

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